Meteor Turns Night Into Day Across Western US

A streaking meteor the size of an oven briefly illuminated parts of the Utah sky to daylight-level conditions early Wednesday, surveillance footage shows.

The video from outside security cameras at the University of Utah’s Milford observatory shows a blinding flash of light around 12:07 a.m., followed by clear images of the meteor streaking away.

“It looks like a shooting star on steroids,” said Seth Jarvis, director of the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City.

He estimated that the fireball was about the size of an oven and was traveling at about 80,000 mph. It broke through the Earth’s atmosphere and was probably around 100 miles above the ground when it became visible, he said.

It almost certainly broke up before it reached the ground, he said.

via Midnight meteor streaks across Western skies.

Mysterious Light,Explosion Rattles Nerves In Several States

Were they meteors? A comet? UFOs?

People from Maryland to Hampton Roads heard loud explosions and saw brilliant, streaking lights in the sky Sunday night.

There was no immediate explanation, the National Weather Service office in Wakefield said. The Virginia Beach 911 center had numerous calls waiting just before 10 p.m., a supervisor said.

The Weather Service said reports were made from Dorchester County, Md., to the Virginia/North Carolina border. People said they saw a streak in the sky and heard an explosion.

“It was orange, like a fireball,” said Steve Wagner, who lives in the Great Bridge area of Chesapeake and said what he saw was too close to be a shooting star. Wagner was outside cooking with family when he saw the streak. He said he went inside when his daughter called, then heard an explosion that sounded like thunder.

Chris Wamsley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Wakefield office, said there could be various causes of the explosions and lights. A team of people is looking into what happened, he said.

Lindsey Hosek of the Great Neck area of Virginia Beach was jogging along the water with her dog when the sky lit up, she said.

“The bright light at first terrified me because I thought somebody was shining a light on me, and then I saw it, and I was in complete awe because it was so beautiful,” she said.

Then she saw something that looked like a comet moving low toward the ground; it was blue in front followed by orange and appeared to be the shape and size of a refrigerator.

Source Read More

Wavy.com is investigating the loud boom and bright flash in the sky witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people around 9:40 Sunday night.

People from Maryland to North Carolina have called 10 on your side and wavy.com reporting the flash.

Witnesses say they saw a bright light off towards the east and saw a bright light raveling across the sky in a west-south west direction.

Scientists from the National Weather Service in Wakefield say they have also been getting hundreds of calls.

Source – Read More

Emergency crews fanned out across the city looking for whatever caused a loud explosion Sunday night.

At around 9:45 911 dispatchers started receiving calls from people reporting a light in the sky followed by a loud boom.

Some reported that the explosion caused their homes to shake.

However, emergency crews could find no evidence of any kind of explosion.

No injuries, fires or damage were reported.

The National Weather Service had few answers.

Jennifer McNatt, a meteorologist said the service had been in touch with the Navy, Air Force and NASA, but none of those organizations had any unusual activity to report.

Officials at Norfolk International Airport had received reports of the light and explosion, but said nothing wsa out of the ordinary at the airport.

Source

Astronomer: Texas Mystery Fireball Was Meteor

The fireball that blazed across the Texas sky and sparked numerous weekend calls to law enforcement agencies now can be considered an identified flying object.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday the fireball was a natural phenomenon — not flying space junk — and a North Texas astronomer said more specifically that it was probably a pickup truck-sized meteor with the consistency of concrete.

The object was visible Sunday morning from Austin to Dallas and into East Texas.

In Central Texas, the Williamson County sheriff’s office received so many emergency calls that it sent a helicopter aloft to look for debris from a plane crash.

The FAA backed off its weekend claim that the fireball was caused by falling debris from colliding satellites plummeting into earth’s atmosphere.

Source